[52] After the 1998 general election, the BJP-led coalition known as the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) under prime minister Vajpayee formed a government that lasted for a year.

[65] The Jana Sangh's aims included the protection of India's "Hindu" cultural identity, in addition to countering what it perceived to be the appeasement of Muslim people and the country of Pakistan by the Congress party and then-Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.

The major themes on the party's agenda during this period were legislating a uniform civil code, banning cow slaughter and abolishing the special status given to Jammu and Kashmir.

[72] The national leadership of the former Jana Sangh consciously renounced its identity, and attempted to integrate with the political culture of the Janata Party, based on Gandhian and Hindu traditionalist principles.

[73] The state and local levels of the Jana Sangh remained relatively unchanged, retaining a strong association with the RSS, which did not sit well with the moderate centre-right constituents of the Party.

[74] Violence between Hindus and Muslims increased sharply during the years that the Janata Party formed the government, with former Jana Sangha members being implicated in the riots in Aligarh and Jamshedpur in 1978–79.

[75][72] Although the newly formed BJP was technically distinct from the Jana Sangh, the bulk of its rank and file were identical to its predecessor, with Vajpayee being its first president.

The BJP initially moderated the Hindu nationalist stance of its predecessor the Jana Sangh to gain a wider appeal, emphasising its links to the Janata Party and the ideology of Gandhian socialism.

[13] The assassination of Indira Gandhi a few months earlier resulted in a wave of support for the Congress which won a record tally of 414 seats, contributing to the low number for the BJP.

[85] The government briefly banned the VHP, and many BJP leaders, including Advani were arrested for making inflammatory speeches provoking the demolition.

[85] In the parliamentary elections in 1996, the BJP capitalised on the communal polarisation that followed the demolition to win 161 Lok Sabha seats, making it the largest party in parliament.

[97][98] The then-Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi and several high-ranking government officials were accused of initiating and condoning the violence, as were police officers who allegedly directed the rioters and gave them lists of Muslim-owned properties.

BJP MLA Maya Kodnani, who later held a cabinet portfolio in the Modi government, was convicted of having orchestrated one of the riots and sentenced to 28 years imprisonment;[100][101] she was later acquitted by the Gujarat High Court.

[112] Political analysts have suggested several reasons for this victory, including the popularity of Modi, and the loss of support for the Congress due to the corruption scandals in its previous term.

Soon after returning to power, on 5 August 2019, the Modi administration revoked the special status, or limited autonomy, granted under Article 370 of the Indian Constitution to Jammu and Kashmir—a region administered by India as a state.

[77][142] The BJP favoured, and in 2019 enacted,[154][155][156] the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution of India, which granted a greater degree of autonomy to Jammu and Kashmir in recognition of the unusual circumstances surrounding its accession to the Indian Union.

[143] Academic Michael Gillan perceived it as an attempt to use an emotive issue to mobilise Hindu sentiment in a region where the party has not been historically successful.

[159][160][128] This was first time religion had been overtly used as a criterion for citizenship under Indian law: it attracted global criticism, and sparked widespread protests that were halted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

[169] The Modi government is opposed to same-sex marriage, stating in a legal affidavit that legalizing it would cause "complete havoc with the delicate balance of personal laws in the country" and that it was "not comparable with Indian family unit concept of a husband, wife & children which necessarily presuppose a biological man as 'husband', a biological woman as 'wife' and children born out of union".

[188][189] The Vajpayee-led NDA government carried out nuclear weapons tests and enacted the Prevention of Terrorism Act, which later came under heavy criticism.

[188] The Vajpayee government ordered the Indian armed forces to expel the Pakistani soldiers occupying Kashmir territory, later known as the Kargil War.

[189] However, it was criticised by opposition parties and scholars for being an infringement upon civil liberties, and the National Human Rights Commission of India stated that it had been used to target Muslims.

[196][197] In August 2019, the Modi government established the post of the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) to ensure better coordination between all three services, a reform that was widely requested after the 1999 Kargil War.

[199] The historical stance of the BJP towards foreign policy, like the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, was based on an aggressive Hindu nationalism combined with economic protectionism.

[200] The Bharatiya Jana Sangh was founded with the explicit aim of reversing the partition of India; as a result, its official position was that the existence of Pakistan was illegitimate.

[200][201] During the Cold War, the party and its affiliates strongly opposed India's long standing policy of non-alignment, and instead advocated closeness to the United States.

[200] In the post-Cold War era, the party has largely embraced the Indian foreign policy consensus of improving relations with the United States,[202] while stressing a desire for a more multipolar world order.

[215][216] The Modi government remained neutral on the Russo-Ukrainian War,[217] abstaining from United Nations Security Council Resolution 2623, which condemned the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.

In September 2018, Amit Shah said at a party meeting in Rajasthan that the BJP IT cell had influenced the media during the 2017 Uttar Pradesh elections and added that, "We should be capable of delivering any message to the public, whether sweet or sour, true or fake.

[227] In Gujarat, minor school children have been enrolled as BJP members[228] The Bharatiya Janata Party was officially founded in 1980, and the first general election it contested was in 1984, in which it won only two Lok Sabha seats.